As reported by the official website: The academic programme takes the traditional format of Sections and Panels, with over 60 Sections normally being organised, each focussing on a particular sub-field of the discipline. Each Section then contains between three and eight Panels, each addressing a specific question within the overall topic. The ECPR General Conference attracts a truly international audience crossing all sub-disciplines of political science and indeed all career stages; presenting a Paper therefore provides the opportunity to benefit from invaluable discussion and debate. Alternatively, participants can simply observe and still take advantage of the full conference experience.

Among several interesting panels we recommend the paper written by (our) Fabrizio Coticchia with Giampiero Cama, titled: “Beyond Parliamentarism. A research agenda on conflicts, political institutions and regime stability in new democracies”.

Here below the abstract:

The crisis of liberal peace, which achieved pre-eminence in the post-bipolar era, has recently emerged as a result of a growing array of problems and failures. The operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have illustrated the setbacks of international liberal peacebuilding. Other approaches, such as “hybrid peace” or “resilience”, have radically questioned the main top-down assumptions of Western humanitarian interventions. At the same time, comparative politics literature has devoted a considerable attention to the understanding of state institutions and rule of law in processes of democratization. However, most research surprisingly lacks systematic analyses capable of identifying the explaining variables of success or failure in regime stability in non-homogenous societies. Combining conflict studies, institutional design perspectives, conflict management and peacebuilding approaches, this paper aims at filling this gap, providing a comprehensive theoretical framework on conflicts and institutions. Moving beyond the increasing “compartmentalisation” of the literature, our goal is to design a map that can contribute to highlight and overcome the obstacles and pitfalls of modelling, portrayed as a “minefield” where mistakes and problems easily emerge. The paper focuses on the dynamic and flexible interactions between actors, institutions and exogenous factors in non-homogenous post-conflicts societies. More specifically, we devote attention to the overlooked role played by the parliament as a crucial arena for better analysing power-sharing mechanisms and state-building.

We provide some suggestions for the coming year. Here below the most interesting and promising conferences on political science and international relations scheduled in 2015. Also Venus in Arms will be “on tour” in 2105.

The ISA’s 56th Annual Convention. The conference will be held in New Orleans (February 18th-21st 2015). Venus in Arms will be at the conference presenting papers on cyber-warfare, public opinion and (counter)narratives, Italian operations in Libya, Haiti and Somalia.

The 73rd annual MPSA (Midwest Political Science Association) conference (April 16-19, 2015) . The event will be held at the Palmer House Hilton, Chicago.ViA will present the paper “Learning from others? Emulation and adjustment in Italian military transformation”.

The BISA (British International Studies Association) 40th Anniversary Conference 2015. The detailed programme will be announced in January. The event (June 16-19 June, 2015) will be held in London. ViA has submitted a paper on coalition foreign policy and junior parties.